It is common practice to utilize pill cutters or the like to cut tablets into approximately equal parts. Representative prior art devices are known from U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,173,826, 4,173,806 and 4,964,555 and an article in the June, 1990 issue of Manufacturing Chemist entitled "Packaging tablets for clinical trials," by Messrs. M. Glover and D. Cooper (Vol. 61, page 26). In drug trials, especially drug interaction trials, large quantities of drug tablets must be cut and placed in capsules. Cutting tablets with conventional devices takes an inordinate amount of time. Further, the work is monotonous which can lead to errors or mistakes.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,344 to Leopoldi, a plurality of pills are placed in pockets of a pad. Knife blades in the pockets cut the pills when a top member is placed over the pockets and manually forced downward. The pill cutter relies on the knife blades to cut the pills and no movable plates are utilized.
This invention makes shearing a large quantity of tablets into substantially equal sized portions fast and convenient and by structure that is inexpensive and yet durable and very accurate.